NASHVILLE, Tenn. (July 15, 2014) ““ Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations (BATO) today unveiled its newly rebranded GCR Tires & Service division. The rebranding effort signifies BATO’s pledge to be the leading provider of commercial tires and service in North America. GCR is committed to minimizing down time and keeping businesses moving by delivering highest quality 24/7 service by trained professionals coast-to-coast.
“GCR is respected within the industry for delivering trusted quality brands including Bridgestone, Bandag, Firestone and Dayton products, top customer service and dependable workmanship time after time,” said John Vasuta, President, GCR Tires & Service. “Keeping fleets and businesses moving is job one for our customers, and a primary focus of the entire GCR team. This rebranding reaffirms our continuing promise to always deliver best-in-class experience and outstanding service.”
With one of the largest network of commercial stores across the country, GCR’s reach extends nationwide. Under the new brand, GCR is standardizing the service experience across all of its US locations, offering the same hours of operation, technicians that are all Tire Industry Association-trained, a nationally connected sales force, and one website for all locations. The service offering includes tire maintenance and repairs, on-site service, 24-hour emergency response, Bandag retreading and more.
The letters of GCR reflect the last names of the original company founders Balie Griffith, Harold Crawford and Perry Rose. The first GCR operations opened in 1945 in Odessa, Texas, and since then, the brand has stood for quality and service within the commercial segment, establishing the mark of quality in commercial tire service. The new logo is crisp, clean and colorful ““ a visual representation of GCR’s continued pledge and commitment to its customers.
For more information about GCR Tires & Service, visit www.gcrtires.com.
About GCR Tires & Service:
At GCR we are highly skilled craftsmen who take pride in giving you our best. We offer a full range of tires and service solutions, providing a wide selection of brands, featuring: Bridgestone, Bandag, Firestone and Dayton. Our 24/7 nationwide network and service team means you get consistent quality you can count on, no matter where or when you need it. Every day, we are working hard to earn your trust and keep your business moving. GCR Tires & Service – Right there when you need us.
About Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations:
Nashville, Tenn.-based Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations (BATO) is a business unit of Bridgestone Americas, Inc., whose parent company, Bridgestone Corporation, is the world’s largest tire and rubber company. Reporting into the BATO business unit are the company’s Latin American tire operations; the U.S. and Canadian consumer tire businesses; the U.S. and Canadian commercial tire businesses; and the Bridgestone Retail Operations, LLC, which operates the largest network of company-owned automotive service providers in the world. BATOP develops, manufactures and markets Bridgestone, Firestone and associate brand tires. The business unit is focused on retails, wholesale and original equipment markets, supplying passenger, light truck, commercial vehicle, off road, motorcycle, agricultural and other tires, as well as retreads, to its customers in the Americas.
Carbios achieves a new key milestone in the development of its controlled biodegradation process for disposable soft plastics
Clermont-Ferrand, France, July 16th, 2014 – Carbios (NYSE Alternext in Paris: ALCRB), an innovative green chemistry company specializing in breakthrough technologies dedicated to the recovery of plastic waste and the production of bio-polymers, took a new significant step forward in the development of its controlled biodegradation process for disposable soft plastics.
With its innovative process, Carbios obtained completely biodegradable plastic material in domestic conditions. This plastic material issued froman oil-based polymer and an enzyme has a controlled kinetic that loses 50% of its mass in 15 days and completely biodegrades in less than three months. This results underlines that the technology of Carbios is an effective industrial answer to address the legal evolutions to better control the end-of-life of disposable and short life plastics
With the support of its longtime partner VALAGRO, the co-owner, along with the CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research), of the Patent Application WO 2013/093355 A1 called “Method for preparing a polymer/biological entities blend,” whose exclusive worldwide license was acquired by Carbios, the company will draw on this success and continue to develop its controlled biodegradation process for disposable soft plastics. At the end of 2013, Carbios managed to preserve catalytic activity of enzymes after adding them to plastic material and exposing them totemperatures as high as 338°F to its composition.
Today’s step forward allows Carbios to consider commercial applications on a global scale for this material, including in the agricultural sector,particularly for mulching films, and in the packaging industry, especially for disposable food, another strategic market targeted by the company.
“We are proud of this new breakthrough, which emphasizes the synergy between Carbios and our academic partners as well as the efficiency of our approach and which will bring us one step closer to an industrialized process. This significant advance shows that we can envision an expansion ofSégolène Royal’s amendment[1], without jeopardizing France’s environmental goals or the plastics industry’s ambitions,” concluded Jean-Claude Lumaret, CEO of Carbios.
About Carbios
Carbios is a young innovative green chemistry company, whose mission is to find biological solutions to the environmental and sustainable development issues faced by industrial businesses today. Carbios acquired the rights to research that was conducted over a number of years by various public and private sector laboratories. By leveraging the unique properties of biological catalysts (enzymes), it has used this research as thefoundation for developing innovative industrial bioprocesses that optimize the technical, economic and environmental performance of polymers(thermoplastic materials and synthetic or food-based fibers). The company has focused its efforts on a strategic application sector: plastics. Carbios’growth strategy is based on a clear business model of industrial value creation that targets attractive markets, develops innovative and competitive bioprocesses and licenses them to major industrial stakeholders for commercialization. Carbios benefits from the financial support of the leading European venture capital firm Truffle Capital. Carbios was founded in 2011 and, since its inception, has been managed via the Holding IncubatriceChimie Verte fund. Carbios was granted the label “Young Innovative Company” by BPI France (former OSEO) and is eligible for investments byprivate equity mutual funds (FCPIs).
For more information, please visit: www.carbios.fr
